MORE THAN JUST A GAME PART VII: THE NEED TO HOLD OUR ATHLETES TO A HIGHER STANDARD

“The true measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught.” ~ Lord Kelvin

On the night that Brock Turner decided to rape an unconscious young woman, he was not acting the way a man should. He acted as a juvenile and a coward. If it weren’t for two young men by the names of Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson passing by the dumpster where Turner was doing his unthinkable act, Lord only knows what would’ve ended up happening to the young lady.

Brock Turner is a rapist. End of discussion. He should be treated as such from this day forward. Rape is not an accident, it is a choice. It is not about what you wear or how many drinks you’ve had; it is about the rapist committing the act of rape and only that. It is not about sex, it is about power. Brock Turner took something away from that young lady that she can never get back as long as she lives.

But Brock Turner was not treated as the rapist that he is when his sentence got handed down. He was treated as the former Stanford swimmer.

He was treated as an athlete. And that is a problem.

Judge Aaron Perksy gave Brock Turner only a six-month sentence in jail with the possibility of getting out after three because of his clean record. The state suggested six years in state prison: the judge decided that the sentence would be “too harsh” for Brock.

Six months for ruining and damaging someone’s life forever. And the judge is worried about the guy that did it.

Aaron Perksy is a former captain of the Stanford club lacrosse team. So, a former athlete himself was sentencing a now former athlete.

Brock Turner was banned for life for competing with Team USA in the Olympics. Why is it that the IOC handed down a harsher penalty than a state judge? Why? Because we live in a society where athletes will always get second chances that regular, every day people don’t. This is unacceptable.

Yes, athletes are human beings too and as human beings they are allowed to make mistakes. But mistakes that have grave consequences shouldn’t get swept under the rug.

Brock Turner isn’t the only case of this. The Baylor athletic department should have every last member fired for their role in the rape culture they’ve let foster on their campus, where young women who have been sexually assaulted by members of their football team get flat out lied to their faces about the players feet being held to the fire.

So yes, athletes are allowed to make mistakes. They are allowed to be human and have faults and falls from grace, only to rise again. Those are the best type of stories, after all.

But we need to hold them to a higher standard than a normal person.

What Judge Aaron Perksy failed to realize is that prison is supposed to have a negative effect on a person. It is supposed to remind them every second that they are there the mistake that they made and the damage that they caused. It is this experience that turned Michael Vick into the man he is today. As many remember, Vick got sentenced to 23 months in federal prison for dogfighting and he had to reimburse the Atlanta Falcons for his $19.97 million dollar signing bonus.

Vick’s time in prison and tenure with the Philadelphia Eagles thereafter made him the man he is today. He was taken from the sport he played in the prime of his career and was forced to reflect on his mistakes and face them as a man.

So why do other athletes seemingly get off so easy? Simple. They produce on Sundays or Saturdays or whatever game day their sports are played on. That’s the only reason that a guy like Greg Hardy was on an NFL roster last year, despite the disgusting domestic abuse case against him: he has a talent to pressure NFL quarterbacks and help teams will ball games.

That’s likely the only reason that Brock Turner got off as easy as he did: the judge saw him as a “kid” with a bright, athletic career ahead of him and gave Turner a slap on the wrist. This thinking is unacceptable.

Athletes have the greatest job in the world: they play games that are usually made for children for a living and typically make large sums of money – larger than what we pay our doctors, firefighters, school teachers, people that are affecting our everyday lives – for playing said game, and that’s even the ones that aren’t that good comparatively.

To be an athlete is a privilege and an honor, not a right.

So in saying that, we need to hold our athletes to a higher standard than the general public. We need to hold them even more accountable because they are ever so present in the public eye. Whether they like it or not, whether they acknowledge it or not, they are role models and heroes for many people but especially impressionable children. Because of that, we need to show what happens when laws are broken, lives are ruined and men act like cowards.

Brock Turner should be ashamed of himself for what he did to that young lady that night. Judge Aaron Perksy should be ashamed of himself for letting a coward who ruined someone else’s life forever get off that lightly. But we as a society should also be ashamed of ourselves for allowing a rape culture to fester in athletics, for allowing athletes to think of themselves as bigger than the law because they play a sport.